Mystery Dungeon (series)

Mystery Dungeon (不思議のドンジョン) is a series of video games developed by Chunsoft, who also created the first five Dragon Quest titles.

Mystery Dungeon games are action-RPGs that challenge players to progress through a series of increasingly difficult randomly generated dungeons. Though some are unique to Mystery Dungeon, most of the games take their setting and many mechanics from an existing series, such as Pokemon or the chocobo from Final Fantasy. There have so far been four Dragon Quest-related Mystery Dungeon games, featuring either Torneko or Yangus as the star.

Mystery Dungeon games are noted for their high difficulty and practice of essentially making players restart their growth every time they suffer a death, which can cause a great deal of frustration; they are therefore favoured by the serious, "hardcore" old-school RPG fanbase rather than by a broader audience.